Melly Week 5

Hey Margo!

This past week with Melly has been all about growth through deeper development and strengthening the skills we’ve worked hard to teach her and retrain over the last month. 

She’s at an important stage in her training where we’re focusing on making her foundation as solid as possible. Consistency and Time. 

Within the foundational skills, we’re focused on deepening her understanding, willingness and overall quality of her skills, like staying focused for longer stretches, finding softness sooner and maintaining it for a little longer, and building her physical strength and mental consistency.

From a skills basis, we are working on key areas including leg yields, improving her steering (so she’s more connected through her body), backing with balance, and getting more engagement from behind so she is using herself in a more healthy and sustainable way.

These are the building blocks for everything else she’ll do in the future.

As we continue focusing on these, Melly will continue to develop more confidence and reliability, so they’ll feel second nature to her as we progress.

We’re at the stage where the work doesn’t really look flashy, but theres a lot of development happening within her mind and body. This is the critical work to develop and very steady reliable partner.

I can confidently tell you, Melly is making steady progress, and every ride is a step forward toward helping her become more consistent, capable, and confident in herself and her abilities.

We are getting close to getting her riding out of the arena. We anticipate we’ll be able to do so either this week or next. We have a few things we want to get more solid in her training and we need our ground to dry out just a little bit more so its not so slick as we’ve got portions of a dark black type mud here that gets super duper slick. We’ve got our fingers crossed we’ll be able to start getting her out this week and getting her more time and experience out of the arena while building on the mindsets and skills we’ve been helping her develop in the arena. 

This week we will get some video of her in work for you and be sure to have it for you on the next update. 

As always if you have any questions be sure to let me know! 

-Colton Woods